


Limits

by Viscariafields



Series: Leandra Hawke [19]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Communication, Domestic Fluff, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Smut, mentions of sexual trauma, working through sexual trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-21
Updated: 2020-03-19
Packaged: 2020-10-25 15:33:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20726534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Viscariafields/pseuds/Viscariafields
Summary: Fenris and Hawke figure out what it means for them to have a sexual relationship.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place immediately after my oneshot 30-Love, which is the slightly non-canon way these two got together in act 3. I reference it at the beginning, but otherwise it's not required reading. 
> 
> This is a smutty explicit fic. All chapters will probably have explicit sex acts in it. It is also a fic about Fenris dealing with his past trauma, so it's a bumpy road. I don't know how great Thedosian sex ed is, so these two are figuring out consent together and it won't be perfect.

Fenris hadn’t planned on taking Hawke to bed. He wasn’t ready yet. But she stood there, explaining how she wanted to blow up that damn sword, and he couldn’t contain himself anymore. _He _was the one ready to burst without the aid of Qunari black powder, but rather with love expanding his chest, filling his hands and feet with a restlessness he couldn’t control. And so he ignored the apology he’d practiced for a year, and instead just told her that he loved her, damn the consequences.

But he wasn’t ready. He didn’t know if he could ever be ready, but he knew he wasn’t ready now.

In the time since their first night together three years ago, Fenris had taken himself in hand and tried to recall the feeling that had triggered his panicked flight. Not the sensation of it, being buried in her, her legs wrapped around his waist, the scent of her skin, the sound of her voice, high-pitched, breathy, calling his name, though he called all this to his mind as well, over and over. It was the _feeling_ he tried to recreate, after he came, three years of frustration and longing and desire spent inside of her, and it was then, in the stillness and warmth of her embrace that his mind went empty, and then unendurably full.

He couldn’t do it. No matter what images he conjured, what lies he told himself, how often he ejaculated into his own hand, the memories didn’t come back. Just a sense of shame, disappointment. The loneliness of a life he had chosen for himself.

This wasn’t to say he hadn’t regained _any_ memories in the past three years. Sometimes he found one, like a stray cat he chased through the alleys of his mind, trying to coax it closer. If he was too eager, followed too closely, it ran. Too slow, and he lost it. Sometimes successful, more often not. And then there had been his sister, who he remembered with brightening and dimming clarity. But meeting her, being betrayed by her, did not give him what he was seeking. And it did not assuage his fear of falling prey to his own mind again.

The memories he had regained were not the same as what he had experienced in Hawke’s arms on that cursed night. There was no unbearable flooding of knowledge, the promise that everything was still there, if only he knew how to find it. And then the inevitable loss.

And if he were to find it, would he like what he saw? Who was Leto, now that he could put a name to his past?

He had considered taking up Isabela’s offer over the years, or simply going to the brothel. But something always held him back. He didn’t think it was just sex that brought on the episode, and while there were plenty of beautiful men and women in Kirkwall, there was only one he wanted to bed.

He trusted Hawke. He had trusted her with his life the day he met her, and she’d never disappointed him. He trusted her with his heart, and gave her every reason to crush it in her hand, to hurt him, to reject him, or to simply close her door to him, and she hadn’t.

He did not trust himself. His reaction after their night together was abominable. And now, three years later, when he told her he loved her and she launched herself at him, not even pausing for reproach—to make fun, to accuse and blame him for their years of separation—he couldn’t trust himself to make love to her the way he had before. His tongue and his fingers were the best he could offer her, and she accepted with open legs and a grateful mouth.

Even so, he was ill at ease when this love-making was done, unable to relax and enjoy these moments of peace and fulfillment he’d spent three years wishing for, and instead he spent hours watching Hawke sleep before he got any rest himself. It was worth it when he woke up to see her looking at him with unfettered happiness. Her hair a mess, her dark eyes practically glowing, gloriously naked in his bed. So he would lavish his tongue on her again and again, and ask for nothing in return.

After weeks of this, of worshipping her with no release of his own, he was a wreck. She could hardly walk into a room without his cock hardening like he was some mindless beast. And it was driving him mad, so he could hardly think, the way her happiness leaked out of her and covered everything in her path. He couldn’t take his eyes off her, and he couldn’t bring himself to avoid her, so when she pressed a kiss to his throat while visiting him in his mansion, the groan he released was more frustration than pleasure, and Hawke heard it. She backed away from him, apologetic.

“If you don’t want to—”

He’d heard this for weeks now. Hawke delicately treading around what he wanted or didn’t want when his desire for her was driving him mad. “It’s not about whether I want to!” He felt the dam of his anger burst, running a hand through his hair, pacing yet again as he faced his own inadequacies. “Every time you come here, every time I want to push you up against the wall and fuck you senseless. I want to tear that silk and leather off of you and hear you call my name as I bury myself in you. I want you writhing beneath me, above me until the bed frame crumbles under the weight of our lust and continue on the floor until you can’t bear another moment of pleasure. I want you shuddering and spent and so tangled in me you aren’t sure where you begin and end.” He had begun his speech shouting, and now he growled into her ear, now a breath away from her. “I have not forgotten how you feel, and I ache for it every day.”

Hawke's eyes were unfocused, and she took some quick, shallow breaths, her cheeks pinking. She licked her lips. “Oh, okay. So, ah, why don’t you do those things?”

He clenched his fists uselessly at his side. “I can’t.”

“Right. Of course. Why is that again?”

“I… am afraid.”

Hawke inhaled deeply at that, grinning on the exhale. To his annoyance, she laughed. He must have shown it on his face, because she shook her head, “Oh, I’m not laughing at you Fenris, it’s just… I don’t know how to make someone want something they don’t want. But _fear_… Maker, fear is an old friend.”

He turned away from her, both ashamed and dubious she could understand what he meant. He barely understood what he meant. Her hand reached to his face, a gentle swipe of her thumb over his cheek, and she forced him to look at her.

“Did you know I’m afraid of spiders?” 

“No.”

“Horrible things. Too many legs, eyes. They were the first things to come to Lothering with the Blight. Guess they’d been there the whole time in caves, but something about the poisoning of the land drove them into the open.” Hawke shuddered.

“I did not know they bothered you. We have fought many spiders together.”

Hawke was fiddling with her belt, pulling out her throwing knives. “And yet there always seem to be more. Worse than blood mages that way. For example, did you know that there are seven spiders in this room right now?”

He raised an eyebrow at the seven knives in her hand, and she flicked them, one after the other, at various walls and corners of his room.

She sighed happily. “None, now.”

Her ridiculous display tugged at the vicious love he held for her and the constant thrum of desire that lived in his skin. He felt himself straining at his trousers yet again. “You will be the death of me,” he muttered.

“You are the bravest man I know,” she said, smoothing his shirt over his chest, “And I don’t think you fear death. Especially not with the methods I have in mind.”

He laughed at that.

“It’s going to be difficult, though. Easier to face fears you can just stab in the face. You’re going to have to figure out exactly what scares you about all of this. And then, even worse, you’re going to have to tell me.”

He grew quiet. She was right. His fear felt nebulous, and he wasn’t sure he wanted it to solidify. Yes, he feared having another episode, gaining then losing his memories, but that wasn’t all. There were memories he did have that lingered, that tainted how he felt about sex. Things that were done to him. Things he was made to do.

He really didn’t want to tell her any of this.

When he didn’t say anything, Hawke offered, “We could start with something that already worked, and build up from there.” 

She came closer, and Fenris swallowed. “What do you mean?”

“You once asked me to touch you with my hands,” she said, “We could start there.”

He nodded, his mouth entirely dry as she reached down to unlace his trousers. “And you could tell me what else you want me to do, if anything sparks your interest,” she breathed into his ear. He shivered and inhaled sharply as she traced her fingers over the outline of his shaft through the cloth. “You can tell me to stop at any time.” One hand reached down to grasp him, slow strokes up his length. His eyes fluttered closed, his head fell back. “In fact, maybe you should tell me to stop sometimes, just to know that I will.” His nerves were aflame, so starved he was for her. He wanted her hands everywhere, and he desperately didn’t want her to stop. He kissed her, tongue in her mouth while she kept pumping her hands over him. The fire was spreading to his thighs, and he dropped his head against her shoulder, a low moan escaping him. “Tell me to stop and I’ll do it,” she whispered against his ear, “I will obey your every word.”

His eyes flew open. “Stop.”

Hawke stopped with a smile, but her expression changed as she looked at his face. He felt like throwing up. He felt like the walls were closing in on him. “Well that went wrong quickly,” she sighed.

“I don’t want you to _obey_ me.” The words came out as a snarl.

She frowned, and then swore. “I didn’t mean—not obey. I will _respect _you, Fenris.” She ran a hand through her hair and then down her face. “I will respect your wishes.”

He shook his head and started to turn away, adjusting himself back into his trousers. "I should—" 

"Don't go." She wasn't pleading; it was a command. "You promised. You promised it would be different." 

He stared at her, anger flaring quickly and receding just as fast. Three years ago he might have reminded her of what his promises were worth. But It _was_ different. He was different. As quickly as the panic and anger and shame overcame him, it was passing. A few more minutes, and he would feel normal if sheepish, and he would still be here, with Hawke.

"In any case," she said lightly, attempting a smile, "This is your house, so it doesn't really make sense for you to leave. I suppose kicking me out would satisfy 'different from last time.'" 

"No. I want you to stay." 

"And you'll go?" 

"No." He crossed the room to her. "I want…" 

This woman had loved him quietly for three years. She had given him time, space, friendship, forgiveness, and purpose in an otherwise shiftless life. He ran his hand through her hair, and she leaned in to the touch. 

"Tell me what you want," she whispered, "_Please._" 

"I want to stay here with you.”

He pressed his lips to hers, and the desperation with which she kissed him back belied her own fears. He would not leave her. He needed to find a way for her to understand that.

She pulled back. “Then come to bed with me, and go to sleep, and be there when I wake up.”

As he pulled off his shirt, he saw her look of hunger as her eyes raked over him. Saw her try to hide it, too. How long before what they had, what he was able to give, wasn’t enough for her? He would not leave her, but he could not ask her to make the same promise in return.

She snuggled up beside him in his bed, wearing only her undershirt and her smalls. He made room for her, adjusting his arm so she could tuck herself against him, rest her head on his shoulder. "Does it hurt you like this?” she asked, “When I rest on you." 

"No," he said, and it didn't. 

"Would you tell me if it did?" 

He took her hand and pressed it to his chest, fingers pushing into one of his marks. As he increased pressure, the mark started glowing, light spreading across his skin from that point. He released her with a hiss. "I cannot exactly hide it." 

"Does that mean… every time you glow…?" 

"No. I believe it's a response to… excitement. Fear or…" he sighed. He didn't know. Pain, fear, sometimes even happiness, during the few moments he'd felt it. 

“Then, could it happen if something feels really good?”

“Yes.”

“Well. So much for anything being clear or easy.” Hawke shifted, “Given the sort of… false start of today, I… I don’t think we can really try until you tell me exactly what you are afraid of.”

She was right. He had to identify and name the problem. The first part was clear. "I am afraid to experience what I did before—the sudden recovering and immediate loss of memories." 

“That’s reasonable." 

"And I am afraid if it does happen that I will give in to cowardice once again." 

"You mean you’re afraid that you will leave me." 

"I won't." 

"But you fear it." 

"I suppose I do.” 

Hawke went quiet for a while. He would not blame her for ending this. He couldn’t trust himself. Why should she trust him? She was silent for long enough that he wondered if she had fallen asleep. He tried to quiet his brain to welcome slumber, and perhaps he was successful because he jolted when her fingers drummed a beat on his chest. 

"Anything else you fear? You already know I don't have teeth down there." 

Fenris hesitated. There was more, but he didn't know how to articulate it. Wasn't sure he even wanted to. It wasn’t how he wanted Hawke to see him. What Danarius did to him, the indignity he made him suffer, the pain… She had a vague awareness of it, but he’d never given any specifics, and she had never asked.

"There are memories I do retain… unpleasant memories that sometimes…" He huffed. “I would prefer to forget them. But sometimes, it seems, they are determined to be remembered.”

“And sometimes that determination is made plain during sex,” she clarified.

“Yes.” His face burned. Hawke wasn’t trying to humiliate him, but he felt humiliated. He closed his eyes. If his instinct was to close himself and run every time an unpleasant memory reared its ugly head, then he needed new instincts. Rather than push her away, he pulled Hawke tighter to him.

She drummed her fingers across his chest again. "Right, so to sum up, you fear regaining memories you lost, reliving memories you've kept, and reenacting mistakes you've made. That's only three things." 

He laughed at that, the tension in his chest transforming into a hearty chuckle over the complete hopelessness of the situation. How could he even begin? He threw his arm over his eyes, laughing almost soundlessly to himself. 

"So that's the good news," Hawke continued, "the bad news is that we might have to face these fears over and over. Day in, day out, grinding it out together. It's going to be hard, sweaty work. All night, all day, until we can get over the hump of what ails you. We are going to mount quite the attack on these fears.”

"Hawke." 

"We're going to have to get our hands dirty, but I know I can take it." 

“_Hawke_.”

She shifted so she was leaning over him, her hair tickling his chest as she smiled at him. “I’m not entirely joking.”

He leaned up to kiss her, just a small thing. Her lips always felt so good against his, so right that they should be there. His chest ached, and he could not help but wonder if her confidence was misplaced.

“There is something else. I worry that you will grow tired of my deficiencies, of my inability to touch you or be touched the way you want. I worry that I cannot be enough for you.”

Hawke traced a finger down his jaw. “I told you before. Even if all we ever do is lie together like this, I will be satisfied. I mean, Maker’s breath, Fenris. I’ve been alone for…” she huffed a sigh. “Well, quite a long time. If I want an orgasm, I can have an orgasm.”

He swallowed as images of Hawke pleasuring himself inundated his thoughts. Hawke in her bed, back arched. Hawke in the bath, gently moaning to herself. Hawke on her knees, rocking against her own hand between her legs. He felt something tighten in his belly, desire flaring up yet again this night. “Show me.”

She inhaled sharply, clearly taken by surprise. But she looked at him with half lidded eyes and nodded before shifting to lie flat on her back. Fenris moved to his side to better watch her. “I’m going to need you to kiss me at regular intervals so I don’t feel so self-conscious about this.”

He happily obliged, coaxing a whimper from her as he sucked on her lower lip. 

She trailed her fingers over her neck, barely touching the skin. “I usually start by teasing myself.” Her voice was almost a whisper, and Fenris was immediately mesmerized as he watched her hand travel lower, delicately sweeping over her breast, tracing a slow circle on her belly, finally brushing her bare thighs before ascending again.

Her movements were almost lazy. This was no purposeful seeking of pleasure, but a slow exploration of her body. Even with these light touches, he could soon see the buds of her nipples hardening through her shirt. He heard the tiny hitch in her breath each time a fingertip passed over one.

He licked his dry lips. He wanted to take the tender bud in his mouth, lave his tongue over her until she cried out. His fingers twitched at his side, unwilling to touch her while she tended to herself, showing him what she liked.

“Kiss me,” she commanded. Her lips parted so sweetly for him, her back arching. Now she pulled away, tossing her shirt off before kissing him again. Her hand massaged her breast, a tiny sound escaping her every time a finger stroked over her nipple.

He mirrored her, taking hold of her other breast, rubbing a thumb across the tender bud as she shuddered against him.

“Hey now,” she said, breaking away from the kiss, and he took the opportunity to move to her neck, biting her with just the amount of force necessary to get her to cry out. “This is supposed to be,” she gasped, and he relished the shallow breathiness of her voice, the concentration she needed to get the words out, “A solo mission.”

“Do you want me to stop,” he hummed against her skin.

“No,” she sighed, “But yes. Hands to yourself.”

Fenris pulled his hands away and raised an eyebrow at her wording, slowly moving them to his laces. Hawke watch his hands and nodded, her own now dipping below her small clothes. His laces undone, he took himself in hand as she let her legs fall open. This was safe, he told himself, he had done this alone enough times. The only difference was that now Hawke was here, more beautiful than he could ever imagine as she pleasured herself for him.

“I want to see,” he growled in her ear, and her only complaint was a slight whimper as she shucked her small clothes and laid back on the bed. Now he watched her tease herself as she did before, feather-light touches over her folds, parting them and running one finger against herself, tracing her entrance, ghosting over the sensitive bud that made her gasp and shiver.

He wanted to see her writhe. His own pleasure was rapidly rising, and it was difficult not to speed up, to race to the end with Hawke naked beside him. She was watching him, lip between her teeth, hand between her legs as she started to rub in circular motions. She pressed her lips to his, moaning into his mouth. Soon she broke away, her mouth partially open as she gave way to pleasure. The rhythm of her hand had matched his pace, and as he increased speed, so did she, burying her face in his neck and muffling her cries. He was close, too close, trying to hold back, hold onto this feeling before he lost himself.

“Fenris, I—” she gasped, “Come with me.”

“Yes,” he said as her whole body seized, pressed against him and shuddering. It was too much—the way she called his name, the feeling of her naked body against his, the trembling of her legs. The pleasure he denied himself pulsed through him and onto Hawke’s belly. He came with a groan and his mind went and stayed blessedly empty.

When he came back to himself, Hawke was watching him. He kissed her again, fiercely, before dropping his head back on her shoulder.

“I should clean you up,” he said, pulling himself off the bed with effort.

“No rush.”

He laughed at that, finding a suitable cloth for her. She was still watching him even as she wiped herself off. She was tense, and she didn’t relax until he got back in the bed with her.

He took the soiled cloth from her hands and tossed it across the room. Pulling her close, he laughed again, a sudden unbelievable lightness in his chest. “I love you,” he said. He felt himself in a shock that she existed at all, that she could exist in this ugly world, and that she would spend any moment of her existence with him. ‘I love you’ didn’t begin to cover how he felt, but it would have to do in this moment.

Hawke smiled tentatively at that. “You’re not hurt.”

“Quite the opposite.”

“And you’ll stay?”

“Always.” 

Hawke settled into his arms, and he drifted off to sleep. He was plagued by no memories, forgotten or remembered, and when he woke in the morning to Hawke's smiling face, he once again felt hope for himself. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always for this fic, content warnings for mentions of Fenris's past, including sexual assault, and sex that doesn't always go well. Also they are both doing their best in terms of working on consent, but they aren't always going to get it exactly right. Life is hard and they are doing their best.

If Fenris had thought that finding release with Hawke would dull his consuming lust for her, he was mistaken. If anything, now that he knew there was a path forward for them, it was even harder to be in her presence. There was always a promise of what would come later, and later couldn’t come soon enough, not with Hawke’s wandering hands on him. Soon they stopped bothering going out at all. They made plans, but as soon as Hawke arrived at his place, or he at hers, the plans were forgotten in favor of the bedroom.

It was slow and strange progress, but it was progress. Each time he stroked her hair in the quiet minutes after a fit of passion, he thought about how this was just one more thing he thought he couldn’t have. Sex. Complicated and elusive, yet with Hawke everything seemed possible.

Hawke was an enthusiastic partner. She quickly learned sensitive places he didn’t know about, where a quick kiss or a soft bite could make him stand erect, tense, ready. She learned just as quickly where to avoid touching him, how hard to grip him, when to let go. And he wanted her to touch him. He wanted her like he had never wanted anything, like he never thought he could want anything. A bite on the neck and he was hers, forsaking sleep, food, air.

He didn’t have any episodes of regaining or forgetting memories. But the fear lingered. That experience had been so painful, the consequences so grievous, that Fenris could not bring himself to willingly invite another occurrence. It was akin to asking him to cut off his own hand—he simply could not do it. There were moments when he had Hawke beneath him, naked and breathless and grinding her hips against his, and through the pleasure and anticipation he felt a deep current of anxiety. That feeling rose more quickly, stealing his breath and smothering the fire Hawke had so carefully stoked in him. He had to stop, pull away from her, catch his breath and reorient himself. He could not take the next step. The fear of loss overpowered his desires.

Hawke had ideas on how to combat his mind when it came to making love. Their position didn’t seem to resolve the matter, and they tried many. Hawke thought he’d be more comfortable on top, and she wasn’t wrong. Her legs around him, his cock nestled in her warm folds as she grinded against him, hair splayed on the pillow, mouth open as he elicited soft cries from her, he teetered on the edge, pleasure demanding he take the next step and enter her, and caution winning every time as he pulled away, unable to.

Sometimes they tried again--he wanted to try again until he got it right, until he could bury himself inside of her, make love to her the way he desired, but more often Hawke took him in her own hands, and he had to content himself with pleasuring her with his fingers, a thumb circling her clit, until he could get her to come undone just as he did.

“We have our whole lives to get this right,” she reminded him. “There’s no finish line. There’s just us.”

So it went. Over time, it seemed they stayed more and more frequently at his place. A shame, when it was a wreck and they had no one but themselves to make breakfast in the morning. The hole in the roof let the elements in, and once when Hawke pushed him up against the bannister, it fell clear off to the floor below. Hawke joked that she felt freer to be loud in the mansion, and the neighbors could chalk it up to restless ghosts.

He liked it when she was loud.

“What if you were drunk?” she wondered aloud, while drinking a tea, “I have less anxieties about things when I’m drunk.”

“That seems like a questionable idea.”

She shook her head. “Oh fuck, you’re right, it’s a terrible idea. In fact, we probably shouldn’t try anything new when we’ve been drinking.”

“Agreed.”

She suggested more positions, maybe if she were on her belly, on her hands and knees, bent over the bed, he would feel at ease. But these positions were worse, and he told her so. Seeing her face, her lips, those dark eyes… it soothed him. Kept him present longer. If his mind was going to betray him, he would rather be looking at her face when it happened.

“What if you were blindfolded?” Hawke asked.

He shook his head. “No.”

“What if _I_ were blindfolded?”

“I don’t see how that would change anything.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said with a blush rising in her cheeks, “Might change something. You could tie me up, too.”

It seemed prudent to save the advanced activities for when they had actually managed to make love the way any common nug could, but what did he have to lose? They had promised each other to keep an open mind. Once Hawke procured the supplies, blindfolding her was simple enough. The only effect on him was that he missed the warmth of her eyes. She swayed in his arms, a smile on her face, but when it came to tying her up, he felt the bile rise in his throat before he even had the bindings set.

“This is much worse.”

“Are you sure?” she asked, slightly breathless.

“_Hawke.” _His unease was fast turning into anger, and he did not want to be angry. He closed his hands into fists at his side.

“Right, yeah.” She easily broke out of his knots and slipped the blindfold off, her eyes landing on his now-glowing hands. He hated how her expression fell. “Terrible idea. I guess I thought… I thought maybe if you had more control over the situation it would be easier somehow.” She tossed the blindfold to the floor. “I’m sorry.”

Control. He did not want control. He wanted… He shook his head. He trusted Hawke, and he didn’t need to control her through rope or bindings or force. It was a disgusting thought. “I need some air.” He paused in the doorway without turning around. “I will return.”

The air in Kirkwall smelled different from that in Tevinter and Seheron, particularly when it rained. Different dirt, different pavement, different water, whatever it was, he focused on inhaling through his nose. He was here, his enemies were dead, and he did not ever have to go back. He was here, and the rain soaked his skin, and it felt good. He was here, and he could go inside and dry off, or he could stay and enjoy the rain, and that felt good, too. He was here, shirtless, outside his home in Kirkwall, and he should probably go apologize to Hawke.

Eventually she came outside, tossing him a bundle before leaning her back against the wall behind where he stood. He unfolded the shirt and threw it on.

“I’m sorry,” she said again, though there was no need for her to apologize. He told her as much, joining her against the wall and mirroring her pose with his arms crossed.

He shook his head, droplets of water flying off his hair. “Sometimes it is hard to remember where I am. I know my feet are in Kirkwall, but my mind finds itself elsewhere. It has been occurring less often, but it is no less disorienting than the first time.”

Hawke was silent for a time. No quick, thoughtless yet witty responses now, though he wouldn’t mind the laugh she would inevitably draw from him. “What do you do when it happens?”

“This. I focus on the senses that are not lying to me. If it was a smell that brought me to Seheron, I focus on the sounds of Kirkwall or the feeling of the cobblestones under my feet. With time, it passes.”

Hawke hummed a noncommittal response, drawing her arms closer around herself. She must be cold. “There are times when the wind smells like home, and I… I have to remember that _this _is my home, has been for seven years.”

“And what do you do when that happens?”

“Talk to Varric. He’s very grounding. Maker, I don’t mean that in a dwarf or stony sort way, just a reality way. Well, all he does is lie, so not reality, but…” She trailed off at his raised eyebrow and then tried again. “These days, I go and find you. Hard to imagine someone like you in Lothering. We never got anyone interesting.” She paused for a second, a finger tapping her chin. “I wonder if my father was actually the strangest person in town. A mysterious mage wed to a noble girl settling down in some backwater village? Three children who never quite looked local but never quite looked foreign enough. Never thought of that until now.”

Fenris knew without a doubt that her family was decidedly the strangest in town, probably gossiped about constantly, and the fact that she only realized it now filled him with a warm softness that pushed out all other feelings. He leaned over and kissed her gently, eliciting a sigh from her as she melted into his lips. He left his hand cupping her cheek as he pulled away. Even in the dark of a rainy night, her eyes glittered. He owed it to her to find a strategy for dealing with his problems that did not involve running. More immediately, he needed to talk to her about what happened. 

“Can you tell me why being bound appealed to you?”

She flushed. This was clearly not a question she was prepared for. “I suppose I’ve been asking you to tell me your most intimate thoughts. Should be easy enough to divulge my own.” She swallowed, and he brushed her wet hair out of her eyes. It was clearly not easy to divulge, so he waited. “I think it’s… there’s something exciting about the overwhelming desire to touch you, and not being able to. And not in the way I couldn’t touch you for all those years. But… Knowing that you want me to touch you, and I want to touch you, but I can’t. So maybe I struggle a little.”

Her cheeks retained their rosy color, her voice breathy, and he knew she was imagining it. The way she described it, he could start to understand. It was a game of denial and release, not… not what he had assumed it to be. “Would you not feel—” the words that passed through his head were too vulgar, too cruel to inject into her fantasy. _Afraid, powerless, used, hopeless_. “Vulnerable?”

She took his hand. “I think that is also part of the appeal. To feel vulnerable with you, to be at your mercy, and for you to choose to share pleasure with me.”

“I could choose something else.” Pleasure could be shared, given, but it could also be taken, selfishly. Painfully. It could be denied and twisted. Ruined.

“I know. Today, for example, you chose to stand in the rain. Can’t wait to explain to Anders how we both got pneumonia. ‘You know how it is, just trying something new in the bedroom and all.’”

He chuckled in spite of himself. Amazing how she could do that—wrench his thoughts away from his worst memories and shove them into the absurd. She still held his hand, and now he brought her knuckles up to brush his lips across them.

“I know what you meant, Fenris, but you’re not going to hurt me.”

He wasn’t so certain. He had no desire to hurt her, no intention of it, but it seemed like something he simply did. Even now, she was cold, she was wet, and she stayed outside because _he _was not ready to go in. And yet, he knew if he said that to her, she would laugh it off, say that it was her choice to stay in the rain. He could hold both thoughts in his head, that he was hurting her, that she was here by her own volition and knew herself best, but he could not determine which part was truer than the other.

She broke into his thoughts. “Now I have a question. Why do you hate my home?”

He was taken aback. “I do not hate your home.”

“You know what I mean. We spend almost every night at your place and it’s, well, it’s a pit, Fenris. It’s rotting and old and full of spiders.”

“Fewer since you’ve moved in.”

“That’s what I’m saying. I haven’t moved in. I don’t want to move in. There’s always a different corpse by the door, which is frankly distressing, and I could never convince Bodahn to move here. I’ll never be able to make an omelet quite as greasy as his are, so tell me why I’m missing out on my morning eggs.”

“I hate your bed,” he blurted out. Another thought he hadn’t given words to, and there it was. He hated her bed. It was the site of one of his bigger regrets, but that wasn’t the reason. It reminded him of a different bed, one he was grateful he would never have to see again.

“My bed?” she asked, and she looked curiously pleased with his answer.

“Yes.”

“The frame, the pillows, the mattress, the coverlets? Which part of my bed?”

He blinked. He wasn’t particularly enjoying this conversation, but Hawke seemed energized by it. “The mattress is fine. Pillows, too. I dislike the rest of it.”

She was smiling broadly now. “I love it when people give me problems I can actually solve. It’s decided. Tonight we enjoy the spiders’ company, and tomorrow we go shopping. Do make a list of any other furnishings you hate.”

“Only if we can get out of this rain.”

“Maker, I thought you’d never ask.”

~~

No matter what argument he used, Hawke could not be dissuaded from insisting Fenris accompany her to buy a bed.

“What would stop me from buying another bed you hate? And wouldn’t that be a complete disaster? No, you must be there.”

And so it was decided. Never mind how it would look, the Champion of Kirkwall escorted by her ex-slave elven lover, pointing out beds in the Hightown trade district and asking his opinion on each one. She never appeared to hear the comments made about them, but Fenris did. His presence diminished her status. When he expressed this concern to her, however, she had responded, “Given that my mother ran away with a foreign apostate, I’m really just upholding Amell tradition by falling for a fugitive. They should all be proud of me for upholding my family’s values.” Then she had kissed him, and his concern, along with all others, was forgotten for a time.

Standing among the Kirkwall nobility as Hawke asked his opinion on different styles of bed frames, the concern was once again at the forefront of his mind. Were this Tevinter and an unmarried noble so brazenly paraded around an ill-suited match, he would have thought her stupid or plotting. Hawke was neither, nor was she truly parading him around. But there were eyes on them both as she held up samples of the various wood stains, smiling wickedly at him while making unbearably bad puns about wood and bed rails. And he was an equally guilty partner in the scene the way he laughed at her terrible jokes. She made it so difficult to take anything seriously.

Hawke decided on expediency—she wanted a bed tonight. Therefore, they had to choose from whatever beds were already crafted rather than wait for one to be custom-built. Their options were slim.

“Are there any you hate?” Hawke asked him.

He gestured at one. Hawke nodded.

“Are there any you like?”

He ran his hands over the carved wood of a headboard. He’d been prepared to guide her away from beds he did not care for, but it had not occurred to him to choose one he preferred. This bed was a gift for him, then, and moreover it was a clean slate. He paused in front of one. He was no expert in the types of woods or the intricacies of carpentry, but he liked the warm color and the carvings along the top. He could imagine sleeping next to Hawke in this bed.

“This one.”

Hawke beamed. “I’m glad we agree because it would have been a shame to disappoint you.”

Fenris chuckled as Hawke inspected the frame, running her hands over all of it. Satisfied, she turned to him and said, “Would you part with your crumbling mansion to sleep in this bed with me?”

It was the easiest answer he had ever given. “I would.”

“Then it’s settled.”

Fenris stood back as Hawke haggled. Years of wealth had not erased a lifetime of thrift, and she would not spend a penny more than necessary. Her generosity seemingly ended when transaction began. And yet he knew she would leave a hefty tip for whoever delivered the furniture. Perhaps she just enjoyed the thrill of the bargain. He certainly enjoyed watching her. A hand was shaken, coin was exchanged, and Fenris approached.

“Shall we deliver the bed to your estate, messere? Or will your manservant handle that?” The man gestured at Fenris without a glance. He felt Hawke stiffen, her smile suddenly all teeth.

“Don’t be ridiculous. Fenris isn’t my servant. If anything, I am his servant.”

“Surely the lady jests,” he replied with an awkward laugh. Hawke did not join in.

“I am no lady. I am the Champion of Kirkwall. I am the servant to all the people of the city, be they merchant, nobleman, elf or mage.” She waited for his reaction, a paling of his face and a nervous swallow before arching an eyebrow and adding, “I never forget _my_ place.”

“Of course, Serrah Hawke. I will have the bed delivered by this evening.”

Fenris found himself grinning on the walk home. A few months ago, he found it difficult to broach the subject of his feelings for Hawke, afraid she would reject him outright. Now she was making ill-advised declarations in the marketplace. Although, her characterization of their relationship was not exactly how he envisioned it.

“My servant?” he finally asked.

Hawke grinned and bowed before him with an excessive flourishing of her arms. “At your service.”

Fenris crossed his arms over his chest. “Are you not worried he will have the bed sent to my mansion rather than your estate?”

She popped up from her ridiculous pose. “Blast. That would be a tragedy.”

“It seems, for a moment, you _did _forget your place.”

Her jaw dropped, and he relished to watch her fight the laughter in her chest. She held a finger up, closing her mouth, opening it again, and finally succumbed to her mirth. This was how he loved her most, unrestrained and joyful, even if between gulps of air she insulted his sense of humor in every way she knew how.

When she finally regained her composure, her head held as high as when she was back to being Champion and not just Hawke, she said, “Don’t be ridiculous, I know exactly where my place is, thank you very much.”

“And where is that?”

“Maker, Fenris, you make this too easy. Surely you know my place is beneath you.”

He huffed. Though, difficulties aside, he could not exactly argue. “And now everyone in Hightown knows it.”

“Or they know that I’m always willing to help a citizen in need with his shopping,” she retorted. “But I’m afraid your allotted time with Champion of Kirkwall, servant of the people, has run short. I have to head to the estate and get some things ready—warn Bodahn, destroy the old bed—but meet me at the Hanged Man later.”

He watched her go, unsurprised to see that not fifty steps away she was stopped by another citizen of Kirkwall, no doubt in need of her service. He also did not doubt that she would provide. Soon, Hawke was walking in the opposite direction of her home, new objective in mind, and Fenris watched until she was out of sight.

~~

In his early days in Kirkwall, Bethany gave Fenris a gift. She taught him how to knit.

It had been a side hustle of the Hawke family. He’d noticed Hawke collecting scraps of fabric, wool, whatever wasn’t covered in blood from their fallen enemies. One evening when he was looking for her, he learned what she did with it all. Hawke had been out, but Bethany had invited Fenris in to pass the time while they waited for her. Years later, he reflected that she had probably been scared. Bethany had probably spent many nights at home with her mother wondering if Hawke was going to return. He’d been terrible company back then, but perhaps anyone would have cheered up that hovel in Lowtown.

“I find it’s difficult to dwell on my worries when my hands are occupied,” she had told him. “And when I finish a nice woolly sock that will keep a foot warm all winter, all my troubles seem a little smaller.”

He learned that on calm evenings, Hawke, Bethany, and even Leandra would knit, sew, and embroider using whatever scraps Hawke had scavenged, and they sold what they could. Bethany had been happy to show him how to knit, and he found it was a pleasing way to pass the long, dull hours in his mansion. It was also useful for warming up his room, though he never bothered with learning how to make socks. After Bethany became a Grey Warden, he hadn’t been able to write her a letter. Instead he had set himself to his most challenging project yet, a pair of mittens, a thank you of sorts, and asked Hawke to include it in her correspondence. In response she had sent him a skein of Antivan yarn.

Hawke had just bought him a bed. He knew exactly how he wanted to repay her. He returned to the marketplace, this time buying yard upon yard of yarn. There were hours before he was to meet her, and so he got started.

~~

Hawke was already at the Hanged Man when he arrived. Shockingly, the rest of their companions did not appear to be. She had changed her clothes, bathed, too, by the dampness of her hair. She was already talking as he sat next to her.

“Do you know that competitive nug-breeding is an actual hobby practiced by the upper echelons of Kirkwall? Multiple people decided that this was the way they wanted to spend their time: Competitive nug breeding.”

The image of the wealthy dowagers of Hightown urging the rodents to copulate appeared in his mind. He turned a quizzical brow to Hawke. “What makes it competitive?”

“I haven’t the foggiest,” she sighed, “But I do know that champion stud-nugs are highly valuable, very energetic, and do not come when called. They also enjoy the smells of Darktown and are partial to cheese.”

Fenris now had a very good idea of how she had spent her afternoon. “Champion stud-nug?” he teased, his voice low.

Hawke groaned and dropped her head into her hand. “Thank the Maker nobody else heard me say that, or I’d have a fabulous new nickname to contend with. As it is, I’m not sure I’ll ever get the smell of nugs off me.”

He leaned in close and took a deep, purposeful inhale. “You smell wonderful.” 

She peered at him through her fingers. He recognized the look in her eye, and a wave of heat crashed over him as her free hand settled on his thigh. She glanced around the room and leaned in close. “There was something new I thought we could try,” she murmured in his ear, “I was thinking of saving it for the new bed, but… seeing as we’re here before any of our friends and neither of us has had a thing to drink and there’s an empty closet right over there…”

Fenris felt his cheeks flush as he allowed Hawke to lead him to said closet. He barely had the door closed before Hawke had him pressed up against it, her mouth on his. “I’ve wanted to do this all day,” she whispered in his ear, her hands already finding their way under his shirt. This was a bad idea, chasing their lust so publicly, but he was powerless to the passion Hawke brought out of him.

As her teeth grazed his neck, he found himself asking, “What kept you?”

She chuckled as she dragged her lips over his skin. “A sense—” A kiss beneath his jaw. “—of propriety—” A kiss on his throat. “—and overwhelming patience.” A kiss on his collarbone.

He had no patience to spare as he gripped her ass and pulled her hips flush with his. He let his hand slide down her thigh, hitching her leg up, his fingertips brushing between her legs. At her small gasp, he crashed his lips onto hers, eagerly meeting her tongue with his own. He would devour her here, if she wanted. Let High and Lowtown hear her cries as his tongue stroked her entire body. 

“Wait.” She pulled her face away, biting her lip and looking him over. She let her leg drop, and at just the small separation of their bodies Fenris had to bite back a groan of disappointment. “I wanted to try something new,” she said, her hands dancing around the waistband of his trousers. He could feel the tightening of his abdominal muscles as she inched closer to his rapidly hardening cock. “If you’re willing, that is,” she continued, and Fenris let his eyes close and his head drop back as she lightly traced his length through the fabric.

“Show me,” he grunted.

Her fingers started unlacing him. “I thought, we spend so much time working on what we do together, and you always take such good care of me, that maybe tonight I could do something that’s just for you.”

She had his cock free and in her hands, and when she got down on her knees, he understood her intention. He inhaled sharply, and she paused, poised to take him her mouth. “Is this…?” she asked, stumbling over her words, “Should I…?”

Her brown eyes exuded vulnerability as she asked. He had to admit he was curious, maybe even eager to know what it would feel like to have her lips wrapped around him. But there was disquiet there, too, and danger, he knew. But with Hawke’s open face, her dark, trusting eyes on him, how could he say no?

For a moment, the wet heat of her mouth overwhelmed him. His head rolled back, and there was nothing but the electricity of her tongue and her lips and a desperate desire for more.

It did not last. He opened his eyes and looked down at Hawke. He was horrified to realize he had grabbed a fistful of her pale hair, though this did not seem to bother her. As he watched her, he was overcome with unease, a deep anger filling his belly. An image crossed his mind, not of Hawke with her lips around his cock, but of different lips. A different cock. A thought he had been avoiding for weeks involuntarily came to mind and became all he could think: _Is this what I looked like? _

"Stop." 

Hawke released his rapidly deflating erection, surprise on her face as she rolled back onto her heels. Her expression changed from confusion to embarrassment as he quickly pulled up his trousers and began lacing. He owed her an explanation, something, but the roaring in his ears, the closeness of the room was making it hard to think. "I do not like to see you…" he flexed a hand into a fist and released it. "On your knees." 

"Have you considered closing your eyes?" 

A joke, maybe even a sincere suggestion, but Fenris was barely holding back the anger and disgust inside of him. His next words came out in a shout. "I would not denigrate you!" 

Hawke’s eyes widened at his outburst. She stood up, slowly and deliberately brushing herself off. "This was something I chose to do with your consent, Fenris. I do not feel denigrated." 

He couldn't respond to that. He couldn't tell her why the sight of her like that made him so angry. He didn’t want that image in her mind, too. He turned away. "It is debasing." 

He heard her draw a dagger from its sheath and flip it in the air. Flip, catch. Flip, catch. The closet was dark even for his eyes, yet she didn’t miss. He turned his head at the next sound to find her prying open a crate with it. Pleased with what she found, she pulled out a bottle, uncapping it and grimacing as she took a swig.

Fenris’s heart had slowed to a reasonable beat, and his hand didn’t shake as he accepted the bottle from her. Alcohol would certainly dull the senses, soften the harshness of this moment, but he found he didn’t want any. Hawke didn’t react when he set the bottle to the side. She simply flipped her dagger in the air once more.

"I think we've done enough work for now, and that we’ve earned a little break,” she said, jamming the dagger into its sheath. She left the room without a backward glance. Fenris sat on a crate, face in his hands. If he had been asked to demonstrate all his personal defects in fifteen minutes, he could not have made a better showing than tonight’s performance. He glanced at the bottle Hawke had left with him, and reflected that he could have downed it and smashed it in front of her, and perhaps that would have been worse. This did not make him feel better.

By the time he felt able to leave the closet and find Hawke, she had a drink in hand and Isabela on her arm. Before he could say anything, before he could make an effort to apologize or say something that wasn’t angry or bitter, Varric caught her attention.

“So, Hawke, I hear you’ve picked up a new profession.”

“Oh?” she said, a fake smile on her face as she downed her cup, “What am I today?”

“I hear you are the servant of everyone in Hightown.”

She scoffed. “I’ve _been_ their servant, Varric. That’s not new. Remember that time I got impaled through the gut to save all of their skins?”

“I thought that was for me,” Isabela complained.

Fenris watched as Hawke pressed a finger to Isabela’s nose. “Of course it was, darling.”

Varric cut in. “Well, you should be careful, Hawke. Soon everyone will be calling on you with all manner of…” Hawke raised an eyebrow at him. Isabela joined her. Fenris thought of the nugs now safe and sound in their Hightown mansions because of Hawke’s efforts this afternoon, and crossed his arms over his chest. Varric held his hands up in defeat. “Yeah, alright, I suppose they already _do_ do that. Only now it will be to fetch their groceries from the market and wash their personals.”

“What do you suppose is worse?” Hawke mused, “A night in the Deep Roads or laundering Lady de Launcet’s smalls?”

“As your favorite companion on all your excursions, _please_ don’t make me choose.”

And so the night went. Hawke drank enough that her smiles stopped being fake. After a time, she even laughed, though not with him. Fenris bristled to see the way she hung off Isabela, his grip tightening around his cup. An irrational jealousy, he knew, but if Hawke ever wanted, Isabela could fuck her with an ease and an uninhibited joy that Fenris did not possess. Frankly, at times he had suspected that many of their companions would have been willing, if Hawke wanted, and he had spent years thinking she would be better off with anyone but him. But she had chosen him, over and over, and in the past months, he’d grown used to Hawke keeping a hand on him all night, leaning her head on his arm or just lacing her fingers with his under the table. Now it felt as if there was a brittle wall between them and he did not know how to knock it down.

On the way home, Hawke tried to stay two steps ahead of him. After years of words unsaid and feelings left to fester and rot, he couldn’t bear to allow this another minute. He ghosted in front of her and blocked her path.

“Tell me what’s in your mind.”

She glanced around them. “Here, on the street?”

“Here, on the street.”

The words didn’t come easily. She didn’t want to say them. “Every instinct I’ve had about how to make this easier has been wrong,” she finally said, hugging herself. “I can’t touch you if it reminds you of him. I won’t.”

It was jarring to hear her even mention Danarius. They had not spoken of him since his death. Easier to pretend that he hadn’t said what he said, that Hawke didn’t know what she knew. But now Fenris knew her reluctance toward him was not just embarrassment or hurt at his reaction to her this evening. She knew what caused his outburst. He bit back his own humiliation. “That is not your decision to make. You can’t—” He took a deep breath, quelling his anger. “You can’t protect me from my own mind. This is something I will figure out myself.” He took a deep breath. He’d _been _figuring it out. And he’d gotten better. He wouldn’t be here if he hadn’t. He reached out to touch her face, to bring her gaze to his. “If, in creating new memories with you I have to be reminded occasionally of the loathsome memories of my past, it is worth it.”

Hawke swallowed. “I don’t want to hurt you. I know I hurt you before and I… I can’t do it again.”

With the moonlight on her face, she was practically glowing in her sadness. “Just because it hurts, doesn’t mean you are the one hurting me.” She closed her eyes, so he repeated, “You didn’t hurt me.”

Hawke slowly brought her hand up to rest on his wrist. A small touch, but it was enough. Fenris moved closer, wrapped his arms around her, pulled her into a hug. “A life without touching you is only half a life.”

She hugged him back, her hands splayed across his back. “I’m sorry for tonight,” he said, and she dropped her head onto his shoulder.

When the hug ended, Hawke hesitated, still not turning back toward Hightown. She rubbed her neck while Fenris waited. “Fuck. Can we… Would you mind if we… Can we sleep at your place? I don’t want to be drunk and sad on our new bed.”

He nodded, and they started home again, this time holding hands.

“Drunk and sad,” Fenris murmured to himself. He started to laugh, a small chuckle to himself that rather than fading away only grew, a prolonged laugh that bounced between the close walls of Lowtown. Hawke peered at him, and he wiped the tears from his eyes. “Drunk and sad,” he repeated, “That’s practically the mansion’s specialty.”

Hawke narrowed her eyes, but she laughed, too. “Then we ought to give it one last hurrah,” she said, squeezing his hand, “And then we can just be sublimely happy and stone cold sober for the rest of our lives.”

“I love you,” he said.

She chided him all the way home for grinning when they were meant to be sad and serious and dour. There was wine enough in the cellar to work on his sobriety, but even with the disaster that was their evening, Fenris couldn’t find it in him to be sad.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whewwww I think this chapter wins for longest chapter I've written in any fic so far. Hope it wasn't too rambly ^.^ I wanted to get it out before I went on vacation, but it just wasn't to be. Thanks for waiting!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You might notice that the chapter count has gone up from three to five! That is because the "final" chapter was nearing 10k words, and I decided just to break it up. Please enjoy!

The door slammed, loud enough that across the estate Fenris found himself on his feet and readying himself for a fight. Odd for Hawke, who usually arrived by silently by window or hole in roof as often as the door. No holes in the roof of her estate, however, and he supposed there was less fun to be had breaking into her own home. Their home, now, if the new bed meant he was supposed to stay. He wanted to stay. The swearing in the hall followed by the mabari bursting into the drawing room confirmed it was Hawke, and he lifted his knitting out of the way of the mabari's eager mouth, suffering an enthusiastic licking while he tucked the future-blanket away.

Hawke walked in, shaking out her hair and grimacing at the grime that came off in her hand. Half her armor was strewn in a trail behind her. When he'd left her in Darktown hours ago, she said she'd only be a minute. He was used to her misjudging the time her excursions would take, or perhaps simply finding herself waylaid by too many requests for one woman to possibly fulfill, but rarely did she come back looking quite so troubled. Or filthy. Her stormy expression settled when it landed on him.

He crossed the room to her. "I thought I might not see you until morning."

"Who can tell what time it is in Darktown?" she sighed, kicking off a boot. "Who can tell why I keep going there? It never gets better. If it's less crowded than it used to be, it's only because I've killed everyone who used to live there."

It was unlike Hawke to voice her pessimism. Bitterness was an unfamiliar color on her. All smiles out on the street with practiced roguish charm, there was something intimate about seeing her stripped down and openly cross. He took her hand. "That is not true. Many refugees found passage back to Ferelden. And many have been able to find homes in Lowtown."

Her mouth twisted into a sneer. "Bully for them. And I wouldn't if I were you," she warned, eyeing their hands, "Maker only knows where that has been."

"My love," he said, pressing his lips to her knuckles, "Not every ill in society is yours to correct."

She slipped her hand out of his grasp and went after her remaining boot. "With my track record you would think people would stop asking."

The boot hit the floor with a thump. "You are the most hardworking, dedicated, and effective woman I know."

She huffed. "You must be thinking of Aveline."

"Believe me," he said, allowing his gaze to drop to her exposed collarbones, lowering further to the curvature of her breasts as his hand moved to her waist, "My thoughts are only of you."

He leaned in, his nose brushing hers, and inhaled deeply. He'd been thinking of her all evening—of this, welcoming her home to their home, an exercise in the unfamiliar practice of domesticity. He’d kept his hands busy with red yarn and needles while he tried not to think of how Hawke might look wrapped up in this blanket and nothing else. Such thoughts bred mistakes, and the sooner it was finished, the sooner he’d find out.

And now she was home, and he pressed his lips against hers, one busy hand inching its way under her shirt. His lips parted, tongue begging for entrance, but Hawke was unmoved. Unmoving, in fact. Her left hand, which usually snaked its way around him to pull him closer, ever closer, remained slack in his hand. Her right, which was as likely to cradle his face as it was to give his rear a squeeze, was limp at her side. He broke his kiss, and he now knew it was his kiss alone, dropping her hand. It fell to her side, swinging uselessly.

"Is something wrong?" He was surprised at how the rejection cut, a flare of hurt and irritation under his skin, then shame at his reaction. He had told Hawke no plenty of times, in more severe terms than simple indifference. Was this truly the first time she had refused him?

"No," she said, "That is--"

He recognized the smile she fixed onto her face, a mask for appeasing others, for people who weren't him. All the warmth in the room seemed to disappear behind that fake smile.

"--I'm a little tired is all. I do want to--"

"_Hawke._" She had her hand on his arm, ready to pull him in. He wasn't certain which he hated more: that she would lie to him about this, or that she would pretend for his benefit. Perhaps she would even fool herself, take a breath and convince herself that it was something she wanted. He'd witnessed her do it for many things, for jobs she didn't want to do, meals in her honor made of ingredients she detested, people she needed to charm-- she put on a cheerful face and pretended so thoroughly that perhaps she believed her own lie.

But not for this. He could not stomach her taking that tactic for this.

The mask cracked; her smile faded. “I just... Maker, Fenris, I just smell bad and I want a bath and a cup of tea, but it's too late and if I drink tea now, I'll never sleep, but I'm too tired to draw a bath, and I'm too bleeding filthy to go to bed.” He tried to interject, but Hawke continued, her words coming out in a rush as she paced the room. “And I never should have sent you ahead tonight. It was a stupid decision and you should have known it was a stupid decision because _you_ aren’t stupid. And it’s all so… endless and… fuck, I can’t even think of the word. And despite what you think about me I’m not just ready to go at it all the time. Sometimes I’d rather read a book or play a card game.”

Fenris had very little experience being yelled at by Hawke. And if it was her intention to yell at him, she wasn’t very good at it. For one thing, she was mostly shouting at the floor. Fenris tried to latch on to the thread of her thoughts. “Do you… want to play cards?”

“No! I don't-- Maker, I--"

"To bed then."

"I can't get in bed smelling like this."

“It's fine. It doesn't matter."

"It's not fine!” she shouted, finally aiming her voice at him, “I don't want to get in bed like this and it might not matter to you, but it matters to me." She tripped over one of her forgotten boots, heaved a sigh, then gathered them both up and threw them into the foyer. At the thump, the mabari tucked his nub of a tail and retreated up the stairs to their bedroom.

Fenris crossed his arms and considered her. Cranky, uncommunicative, throwing things, and trying to start a fight for no apparent reason-- it was as if she were doing an impression of him from years back.

Two could play at that. He cleared his throat and tried for his best imitation of her. “I love it when people give me problems I can actually solve.”

He didn't wait for her reaction, simply turning on his heel and leaving the room. He already had the kettle on by the time Hawke caught up with him in the kitchen. In the pantry he found muffins baked earlier that day and dried fruit. He set out a plate.

"Eat."

"I'm not a child," she retorted.

That felt debatable in this moment, though Fenris knew better than to give her an opening. "In my experience, adults are also in need of adequate nutrition."

She rolled her eyes at him, but he did not wait to see if she would comply. He set the tea to steeping and left the room.

Were he the one who was tired and cross and in need of a bath, he might have just warmed the water and dumped a bucket over himself. For the amount of filth generally brought back from Darktown, he might have filled the tub half-full for a more thorough scrub. For Hawke, he carried bucket after bucket and filled it high, runes warming the water as he went.

As he rummaged for something sweet to throw in, the strange thought occurred to him that this was something he once did for his former master. Ten years had passed, and though the actions were the same, it could not feel more different. In a drawer he found packets of salts and sweet-smelling herbs tied with ribbons. He pulled some out, raising them to his nose one at a time to find something she might like.

“I always save those for a special occasion," Hawke said meekly from the doorway. She had chosen to arrive silently this time and wasn’t quite meeting his eyes. "And then every day feels pretty much like the last day, and it’s hard to declare one special over another, so I just hoard them all in a cupboard. I suppose that makes the cupboard fairly special.”

Fenris lowered his hand, settling on a citrus blend. “Tonight was the first time I have drawn a bath for another as a free man. I think that should suffice as special."

Her face fell. “I didn’t think… I should have done it myself. I could have done it myself. Maker, I've been acting like such a child tonight. I didn’t think—”

“Free men draw baths for the women they love, Hawke." He dumped the contents of the little bag in the water.

"Even when they are cranky and ornery and all together terrible company?"

"That's probably the best time to draw someone a bath."

He admired his work. The water was hot, the salts were hissing, the room was rapidly filling with scent of oranges. If he'd had time or prior knowledge of the evening's task, he might have added some petals to the water, or prepared a glass of wine to be enjoyed while soaking. Still, only someone determined to have a rotten evening would refuse such a bath. Hawke looked ready to do so as she lingered in the doorway.

Fenris was not going to allow her to succeed. "Do you want me to wash your hair for you?"

"No," she said, blinking in surprise.

"Then enjoy your bath." He pressed his lips to her forehead, maneuvering her across the threshold, ready to shut her in the room if that was what it took.

"Wait." She grabbed his arm, and he waited. Hawke wasn’t one to eschew simple pleasures; His handiwork had to win out. Failing that, he had half a mind to just dump her in bath. “You could join me, if you want,” she finally said, adding quickly, “Just to bathe, I mean. There’s room enough for two and I wouldn’t mind the company.”

He tried not to gloat. “And having spent a fair bit of my evening in Darktown, I also smell like a sewer, is what you truly mean.”

“Well, now that you mention it…” Hawke was almost smiling, her first true smile this evening. He would not say no to that.

It was awkward to be bathed by someone else. Hawke situated herself behind him, her legs on either side of his, her knees just breaking the surface of the water. This was unfamiliar, though not unpleasant. He sighed as she moved the cloth over his back. Her ministrations were slow, almost listless-- hardly the scrubbing needed for a man who had spent the day in the gutters. With the heat and the steam and her hands on his skin, he found his eyes closing of their own accord.

"I was meant to be taking care of you tonight," he grumbled.

Hawke simply hummed and scooped more hot water onto his neck. There was still the old voice in his head, the voice that had always sounded remarkably like Hadriana, telling him he was not worth this, that every ounce of attention paid to him was already two ounces too many, and every moment of peace would be repaid thrice over with cruelty. As Hawke rubbed her cloth over each of his fingers, gently twisting to dislodge the dirt of the day, it was easy to tell that voice that he had paid up front, and even if he was wrong, he didn’t care. So he leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, and Hawke took advantage of the angle to wash more of his back.

Her arms wrapped around his middle and he felt her forehead press into his back. He sighed again, his endless warm sighs joining the steam in the room as he relaxed into the embrace. His back would start aching in this position in a matter of minutes, no doubt, but no matter.

“I’m sorry I snapped at you,” she murmured, releasing him and returning to her washing.

“Did you? I didn’t even notice.”

That earned him a snort and a gentle whack with the washcloth. “You can wash your own hair for that.”

“Thank the Maker. At your rate you’d do it one hair at a time and we’d never get to sleep.”

A sudden prod at his side and he jumped, splashing water over the side of the tub. Before he could protest her two-fingered attack on soft skin of his torso, Hawke hissed in his ear, “Oh, did you notice that little snap? What about this one?”

She pinched his ass this time, and a flood of water crashed onto the floor as he wrenched around in the tub to block her attacks. Hawke struggled, but only barely, sliding down the tub as he grabbed her hands and pinned them above her head.

Having subdued her, he leaned forward and said, “You know in Seheron, we ate snapping turtles.”

Her eyes burned as she said, “Have at it. I’m a delicacy.”

The water was up to her chin, her hair either plastered to the side of the tub or fanning out in the water beside her. He had her arms caught, and with no purchase she was slowly slipping down into the water. Somehow, her eyes still blazed with challenge. In short, she looked ridiculous, and Fenris would have liked nothing more than to ‘have at’ her.

Instead he let her go with a large splash, ignoring the throbbing heat under his skin. “There. You are clean now,” he said, turning to scoop water over his own hair.

“Hardly,” she huffed.

“Then stop wasting the water I carried for you.”

For a moment he thought she was going to splash him, and any pretense at bathing would truly be lost, but she relented and began lathering soap in her hair. Their bath once again grew peaceful, the lapping of the water the only sound.

When she tired of her lazy cleaning, Hawke wrung out the cloth, hung it over the side of the tub, and softly ordered, "Come here and lean back." 

He obeyed, falling into her arms, his head at her shoulder. Her lips pressed against his hair. If she let him, he would fall asleep here. And even that thought was strange, to be uncomfortable only half an hour earlier, and now to feel entirely at ease. It was a mysterious ability Hawke had. And it made him feel worse about the events that preceded the bath.

"Earlier—” he started, but already wasn’t certain how to finish the sentence. He tried again. “I don't want there to be a falseness between us. You don't ever have to pretend with me, Hawke. I don’t have any expectations or…” He sighed, trying yet again. “You have been very accommodating to me. I wish to be the same for you. I want you to be truthful with me about what you want or don’t want.”

He felt her muscles stiffen behind him, though she made no movements. “Has it ever occurred to you that I might also be nervous?”

It honestly hadn’t. Hawke was more experienced than he was, more eager, less inhibited. As far as he knew, her sexual history was less fraught. This entire time, she gave every new suggestion with a smile. It pained him to think those might have been fake as well.

“I mean, it’s been a long time,” she continued, “What if I’m not good at it anymore?”

“That’s… I’m sure you’re—”

“Fine?” she asked with three years of bitterness packed into one syllable.

“That’s not—” He wanted to say that wasn’t fair, but wasn’t it? “You know I did not mean it like that. I did not mean it at all.”

“I know. I know what you meant but… you said it. And I as much as I would prefer not to, I remembered it. And I have this feeling like if I don't get it right this time, if it isn't good for you, or, Maker, if it’s _bad_, like last night was bad, that there won’t be more chances.”

Fenris wasn’t certain what to say. He didn’t know how to assure Hawke he wasn’t going to leave other than by simply not leaving. His words were not enough to assuage this fear—a fear he placed in her to begin with. It would be easier to know what to say if they were facing each other. With his back to her, he felt especially useless.

She ventured, “Can someone be so bad in bed that they ruin six years of friendship?”

This, at least, had a simple answer. “No.”

Fenris glared at the wall, steam swirling in front of him. He was too old to have so much of his life dictated by fear. He had faced too much. And Hawke was ridiculously, foolishly, life-threateningly brave. She did not let fears hold her. And yet somehow, here they were.

“How many spiders are in this room?”

Her answer was quick. “Three.”

“How many knives did you bring into the bath with you?”

A small huff on his shoulder. “None.”

He closed his eyes. “They live another day.”

A slow release of air onto his wet hair was her only response.

He was almost asleep when she spoke again. "Maybe it doesn’t have to be some big, perfect moment between us.” Her voice was almost at a whisper. “Maybe we don’t have any of those. Maybe we should aim for just fine or even not terrible and work our way toward sublime.”

Fenris freed himself from his arms and stood up, spots momentarily blinking in front of his eyes. When they cleared, he scanned the walls.

“Are you done?” she asked.

He didn’t answer. He’d found his target, and activating the lyrium, he bent the space in front of him, pinched his fingers, and held in his hand a spider’s heart. Well, at least it was the organ found in his best approximation of where he imagined a spider’s heart would be. It might have been quite a few organs now that he looked at it.

Hawke stared at him slack-jawed as the water he’d carried with him pooled at his feet. He flicked the heart away. Without taking her eyes off him, she pointed at the opposite wall and said, “The other two are in that corner.”

Spiders dispatched, he helped Hawke out of the tub. She retrieved every clean towel in the room for them as well as the mess they’d made of the floor, tossing them down and leaving them where they lay.

He pushed the wet hair away from her eyes. “My love, you could smell much worse than you did tonight, be in an even fouler mood, and a night in playing cards with you would still be sublime.”

Hawke smiled, and as the sun came up over the horizon and lit the streets of Hightown, they crawled into their bed together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hawke was honestly just hungry. Dealt with it like a champ.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is explicit sexual content in this chapter! There are also small references to Fenris's upsetting past, though fewer than in previous chapters.

And so Fenris now lived at Hawke’s estate. There was no official talk about it. He couldn’t even be certain which day would qualify as the day he lived _here _and not _there_. The mansion would not be sold off or reoccupied. One afternoon he came home to find Hawke had acquired a matching wardrobe to her own, presumably for his things, so he filled it. In the hall, there was a new weapons rack, tall enough to accommodate his swords, so he hung them. Over days, weeks, he found he had no reason to return to the crumbling residence. So he didn’t.

It was everything he’d ever hoped for and something he’d feared for years.

By all accounts, Hawke was accustomed to being loved. In her stories, her father doted on her. He had seen firsthand how Bethany adored and admired her. And even if at times their relationship was fraught, Hawke’s mother loved her deeply. Outside of her family, there were her friends. The way they told it, Varric fell for her instantly. What, but love, could have brought Isabela back from her escape from the Qunari? Or stayed Aveline’s hand from arresting her for all these years?

And she accepted love, craved it, encouraged it. Encouraged it for him, too, when he did all he could to avoid it. He was under no illusions that he had come into his friendships by his own social merit. She had forced the issue to the point of rudeness. Despite his best efforts, he was certain Varric loved him. Aveline, too, and Donnic. Isabela, more or less.

Fenris had no frame of reference for it. If he had been loved before Kirkwall, he did not remember. Chained to his master’s side, there was no room for companionship. The closest he had experienced prior to meeting Hawke were the Fog Warriors.

And he killed them.

When Fenris had arrived in Kirkwall, living alone had been a necessity. He could not trust the people around him to not get killed by the men chasing him. Could not trust them not to die by his own hand when his master found him again. There was a trail of blood behind him, and he could not deny responsibility for it.

And then he met Hawke.

It took a mere evening for him to know she could hold her own against any slavers come for him, but years passed before he knew himself capable of possessing himself. Hadriana had been a test, a feat of will, and even when he found she held as much sway over him as fog rolling over the harbor, her death still sent him plunging to the depths. The first thing he had done in his victory was hurt Hawke and break his own heart. Wasn’t that a victory for a dead altus?

Danarius had demanded his love, and Fenris believed he had none to give. He was a bodyguard, Danarius his charge, spending day and night together, and it would have been natural for deep feelings to form. They would not have been the first in Tevinter to have such an arrangement. But when he finally stripped away his apathy, when feeling finally found him, he felt only anger and hate for the man. And he killed him, too.

He lived alone because it was safe. But it was also all he knew. Even living chained to a man’s side, he was alone. It was why he found his sister. There was a man who existed before he was Fenris. A boy who probably helped his mother with the laundry, stole sweets when his elders weren’t looking, fought viciously with his older sister. Or perhaps he had always been obedient—maybe that as much as anything got him chosen by Danarius. They dangled a carrot in front of him, and he happily, blindly, foolishly chased it. But before that, he had a family, and he had a place in that family, and Fenris the man could not fathom it.

He had hoped Varania would have stories. Did Leto have a talent for music? Did he ever learn to create things? Did he collect anything? Was he kind or selfish or funny or prone to hours of melancholy?

Was Fenris more than what Danarius had forged him into?

He would never know. Fenris the brother and Fenris the son, even Fenris the roommate did not exist. But now he lived with Hawke, who he loved, desperately, furiously loved, and it was strange how sitting here with her legs stretched across his lap, a half-finished blanket draped across her as he worked on the rest, the comfort of the moment almost hurt. He hadn’t expected love to hurt.

“What are you thinking about?” Hawke asked, flexing her feet while waiting for an answer. Her hair was tied away from her face with a ribbon, something he had never seen her do outside the home, though her pale fringe still settled firmly over her dark eyebrows. People held such small secrets in their own homes—the sweets they ate standing in the kitchen in the middle of the night, the songs they hummed when they thought they were alone, the rules they let their pets break. If his intrusion into her home caused her discomfort, she did not show it. When Hawke looked at him, she loved what she saw. She had for years now, even when he tried to ignore it, even when he pushed her away.

He set his knitting down on her legs. “That before meeting you I had no notion of what love was.”

Hawke blinked, eyebrows raised. “Is that all?”

He smiled to himself, always happy to confound her. “What were you thinking about?”

“Whether there was any pie left over from supper.”

“I believe Porthos got the last of it,” he said, nodding at the slumbering mabari.

She sighed, picking up her mending again. “I knew he looked too satisfied with himself. Orana is charmed too easily.”

Fenris decided against informing her that _he _had fed the dog. He supposed he must add the dog to the list of creatures in this world whose love he courted. Successfully, he noted with pride.

He watched Hawke work. More often these days she was spurning her embroidery work for simple mending. Small problems easily solved. Tonight she darned socks, and not just her own by the height of the pile. Perhaps they belonged to Sandal and Bodahn, but Fenris suspected she was now collecting clothes from further afield. For one thing, the socks in her hand were adorned with the initials _V.T_. Given her propensity to go places and take things without being noticed, he wondered if Varric was even aware that she was doing this, or if the man believed in sock fairies.

She finished the sock and turned in right side out with a satisfied smile. Catching him watching her, she quirked an eyebrow in question. He might as well ask.

“What was it that brought you to love me?”

The answer came easily. “Your n—”

“Other than my nose.” She opened her mouth again, and he cut her off with his hand in the air. “Or my eyes.”

She snorted. “Nothing physical?”

“No.”

“Does your voice qualify as a physical property?”

He sighed. “And now I know that should I catch a cold this winter and lose my voice and have my nose turn red and leaky, I shall forfeit the love of the Champion of Kirkwall.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said carefully, frowning while reaching for another sock, “You’d still have your eyes.” As she placed the sock over the darning egg, her shoulders began to shake with the laughter she was now failing to hold in. Her smile was almost resentful as she retorted, “I adore your sense of humor.”

“I only developed that after knowing you for some time.”

Ignoring him, she continued, “And catching a cold would only make your voice huskier. Growl-ier. I’d be in a permanent swoon. I’d be so useless you’d never get better.”

“And so you truly will be the death of me.”

She bounced her legs in rebuttal, jostling him. He wrapped his arms around them, preventing her from kicking further and yanked, just slightly, just enough to pull her from her sitting position so her head dropped to the arm of the sofa. She looked up at him, eyes defiant, daring him to continue, and he knew that it would take just one movement, a hand sliding up her bare leg, to end all conversation for the evening.

But he wanted a real answer out of her. He released her legs, ignoring the quick disappointment that flashed across her face as she sat up again. She rearranged herself, now sitting cross-legged, her elbow resting on the back of the sofa and her head resting in her hand.

“I was hoping for an answer.”  
  


“Of what brought me to love you?” She hummed to herself. “Well I can’t say I loved you at first sight. I admired the way you fought, I was impressed by how you tried to trick me into being murdered and then immediately pled for my help. Very earnest of you. Bold, really. And your nose, obviously.”

“Obviously.”

“I don’t think I had any inkling of loving you until you threw that wine bottle at the wall. What is it you said?” She dropped her voice as low as it would go and grumbled, “’I can still find pleasure in small things.’ Something like that.”

Fenris frowned. Of all things for her to have liked about him, his impulsive anger was not what he was hoping for. He could not say what he wished her to tell him, but it was not this. “Those were dark days. I was… I was not at my best.”

“Oh, make no mistake, you were an entire asshole that night.” She fiddled with the darning egg, still in her lap, and smiled ruefully. “I came over to talk, you opened a bottle of wine, drank some yourself, smashed it against the wall without offering me any, and then started asking me why I didn’t simply go home to Ferelden, like that was even an option. Salt in a still weeping wound.” She tossed the egg onto the pile of socks and frowned at it. “And, for what it’s worth, if you started smashing all of our possessions in fits of passion today, I would be very concerned and not at all romantically inclined. Unless it’s that painting in the hall. Hate that thing. I always feel like it’s watching me, and it does not care for what it sees. I think it’s my great great grandfather? Ten sovereigns says he was a prick.”

“Hawke.”

“Right, right. Fine. You smashed a wine bottle and I jumped into your bed.” She sighed wistfully. “That bottle of wine could have purchased me my way into the Deep Roads.”

Were he not living in her house, had he not started this conversation himself, he would be having some serious worries about their future. “I fail to see how my churlish behavior was the start of a romantic attachment to me.”

“Well, I suppose you have to consider that I wasn’t at my best, either.” She stood up and stretched, arms wide before dropping them. Her restlessness belied how little she wanted to talk about this, but Fenris needed an answer. He waited. “I know it’s not remotely the same, but I had just finished a year of servitude. I had lost my home, my brother, and the first thing my uncle did was sell me and Bethany to a mercenary.” An uncommon note of bitterness entered her voice, dark eyes finding fault with some spot on the floor. A blink, and she was smiling, tone light. “And honestly I barely remember it. Just wake up, try not to think about Carver, stab whoever I’m told to stab, sleep. Keep Bethany alive and hidden and don’t starve. But I had it better than so many others. I was alive, I made it into the city, so I couldn’t complain.”

Fenris snorted. He’d seen where they lived in Lowtown. Spent a few evenings there in the crowded dump Gamlen called home. He could have found plenty to complain about.

“But you,” Hawke continued, “You were all complaints for a year. Magister this, Tevinter that, kill all mages, just barely-contained fury with a veneer of politeness on top.”

“And this attracted you?”

“No! Well, sort of. I mean it’s one thing to drink and enjoy a bottle of wine that could have purchased you a comfortable home in Lowtown instead of a decaying reminder of magister depravity, but to not even finish the bottle and then smash it against a wall in a rage? It was so wasteful and stupid and I _felt _it. I wanted it.”

She let herself fall back into the sofa, muscles limp.

“You love me because I’m wasteful and stupid?”

Hawke considered this for only a moment before her smile affirmed it. “You’re also brave. Honest. Funny. Graceful. Trustworthy. Intelligent. Crafty.”

It wasn’t the answer he was looking for. That anger that drove him wasn’t _him_. It was a symptom, a gift of his former master, pulsing through him as sure as the lyrium. Something he had painstakingly cut out of himself, and rightfully so.

“That anger was killing me.”

“And my wine cellar thanks you for the growth you’ve achieved.”

He let out a slow, controlled breath. It was vile to think that something as important, as deep, as integral to his being as his love for Hawke could have been started because of the anger imparted to him by people he hated. That something so odious, so disgusting, generated feelings of _love_…

“I’ve put my foot in my mouth, haven’t I.” Hawke had scooted closer to him so that they were almost touching. She was looking into his face, but he kept his gaze on the floor. She was going to try to please him now, turn on her charm, unsay what had been said. “I-- fuck. Let me find a different memory. A better one.”

His words came out flat. “I do not need you to lie to me.”

“It’s not a lie. Like I said, I didn’t fall in love all at once. There were just moments where I knew I liked you and… I wanted you.” Fenris said nothing. He had brought this on himself—asking a question and disliking the answer.

“There was the time I caught you sneaking out of Gamlen’s house in the middle of the night as I was coming home.”

“I was not sneaking.”

“You were skulking.”

“I was walking normally.”

“And your normal walk is a skulk.” Fenris snorted. Stupid, wasteful, angry, and skulking. It was not the first time his 'normal walk' had been commented on. _That _ could also be attributed to his time as a slave. The bitter taste in his mouth grew stronger. “As I was saying, I caught you, ah, _leaving_ Gamlen’s house, but instead of turning to Hightown, you went toward the harbor. I was afraid that you were scouting for the templars, so I followed you.”

“So you were the one sneaking and skulking.”

Hawke brought a hand to her chest in mock indignation. “Only the former. Hawkes may sneak but I have _never_ skulked. In any event, I followed you in a manner that left me undetected by your fine elven senses.” It was probably true, as he had no idea which evening she was talking about. Hawke told of how she pursued him to the docks, certain he was about give up her sister to the templars. Instead he diverted to a bakery, already open for the morning rush of sailors and dock workers. She couldn’t see what he purchased, but she did watch as he dropped half of it on the ground. Before he could retrieve his breakfast, a stray dog lunged for it. He made to fend it off, but then he stopped and gave up. Let the dog eat. He leaned his back against a stone wall and by all appearances they enjoyed their breakfast together. He might have even spoken to the dog who patiently waited for another dropped morsel, though Hawke was too far away to hear him. Then, and here Hawke’s eyes grew large and deadly serious as she relayed the story, he tore off a bit of his breakfast, dropped it on purpose, and they finished the meal together. After, he turned back to Hightown and she went home.

The way she told it, he made a pathetic figure, unaware he was being followed, being taken for a fool by a stray mutt.

“You didn’t trust me?” he asked.

“You were very clear on how you felt about mages.”

“If I had turned in your sister, what would have prevented you from handing me over to slave hunters the moment you could?”

Her brows knitted together in consternation. “Maker, I didn’t even think of that. Oh, that would have saved me a lot of worry years ago.”

Despite his bitterness, despite the foul taste her first story left in his mouth, Fenris laughed. She didn’t trust him, but she hadn’t even thought of how she could use his position to her advantage. Not to mention—“I was kind to a dog in front of a Fereldan and now I share her bed.”

Hawke rolled her eyes, but she was smiling and when he placed his arm on the back of the sofa—an invitation—Hawke took it, leaning against his shoulder with a sigh. “It wasn’t just that. A lot of people when they are under great stress as I imagine someone might be if they were in an unfamiliar city being pursued by hunters who wanted their skin, they would find it easy to be cruel to a pathetic and bothersome creature that crossed their path and stole from them. Not everyone is kind under duress. Especially when they think they are alone, and they just lost half their breakfast.”

Fenris had no memory of this event, but he did think it was the first time anyone had ever described him as kind. He no longer felt as though the story was a lie, though perhaps six years of distance would color all memories differently. In the first story, Hawke hadn’t described the twisting rage that ate at him. The way she told it, it sounded more like passion. In the second story, she saw kindness, when perhaps the breakfast just wasn’t very good. Perhaps he wasn’t very hungry. Her perceptions were _wrong,_ but that didn’t make her wrong.

Hawke laced her fingers with his. “Come to think of it, giving _more_ of your breakfast to a stray was stupid and wasteful, too. Is that what I like? Is that really what I’m into? Stupid and wasteful?”

“Apparently.” He pulled her closer, wrapping his arm around her waist. She tucked her head under his. The conversation wasn’t what he had expected, but neither was anything else surrounding Hawke. “No matter what drew you to me, I am lucky you were.”

“You still love me after this conversation?”

With a finger to her chin, he tilted her head back so he could look into her eyes. “Always.”

She pressed her lips to his, and any lingering bitterness he felt was washed away by the sweetness of her tongue against his. And there was more to be had. He slipped her silk pajamas—finery, she called it—down over her shoulders, exposing more skin, more sweetness to overwhelm the lingering years-old venom that he discovered in himself from time to time. With a small movement, she was beneath him, back arching already, bare thigh pressing against him in a way that made his blood burn.

He meant his words. It didn’t matter what drew her to him. She was here and she was soft and beautiful and inexplicably, she loved him. He could search for himself in Hawke, and _fuck_, he enjoyed it, his mouth on her skin and his hands on her thighs, her waist, her breasts, her face, but he wouldn’t find himself here. He would find love and heat and pleasure and acceptance and _Hawke_.

As he hiked her skirt up, relieved her of her smalls and hooked her legs over his shoulders, he knew she was right, she was always right, even when she was wrong. He kneeled before her on the floor, marveling at how her muscles went taut in anticipation. He drank in the strained cry she released as his tongue probed her folds and flicked higher to her most sensitive spot. He was the most stupid and wasteful man on the planet. Hawke swore when his tongue reached her clit, circling it, and he reached down to free his erection, finding Hawke had somehow already unlaced his breeches without his notice.

_Stupid_, he thought, slipping a finger into her yielding wet heat. _And wasteful,_ that he had missed three years of hearing her sigh and moan like this. He thrust his fingers into her with one hand and gripped himself with the other, pumping in time, fucking her with hand and mouth while stoking his own flames.

She would not last long like this, and maybe that was wasteful, too, because why shouldn’t he prolong it? Why shouldn’t he extend her pleasure until she begged him for release? Her muscles were already tightening, she was clenching around his fingers, and he knew she was fighting not to buck her hips, grind herself into his face. Instead he stupidly increased his pace, his own control fracturing at the edges from his ministrations. 

“Fenris, I—” Unable to finish her thought she repeated his name, over and over. That as much as anything broke his rhythm. His tongue still laving over her clit, he groaned against her. Her words deteriorated into gasping moans and he concentrated all his effort on pushing her over the edge. She clenched around his fingers until she cried out and her legs shook around him. He guided her through it, delaying his own gratification until she stilled—only then did he come in his hand, his forehead resting against her thigh.

When his senses came back to him, all he could hear was Hawke’s gentle breathing and the crackling of the fire. She had gone boneless, and he slid her legs from his shoulders, placing them back on the sofa. “Maker,” she murmured, and he grabbed a piece of scrap cloth from the mending pile to clean himself up.

Her clothes half off, her hair a tangled mess, she had never looked more beautiful to him. He carefully laid on his side next to her, almost on top of her really, and closed his eyes.

“If not for you, my life would have descended into unrelenting bitterness.”

“Happy to be of service,” she sighed, faintly smiling as she stared at the ceiling. He buried his face in the crook of her neck and she laughed, making more room for him to stretch out beside her on the sofa. They would be more comfortable in bed, he knew, but if she was content not to move, he would not be the one to suggest it. 

His thoughts wandered in a sleepy sort of way. Six years ago, when he was beset by insomnia and feeding a stray dog a lousy breakfast or smashing bottles against walls, the idea of having a best friend was completely foreign to him. Now he lived in her house, shared her bed, held her in his arms. He was the same person, and he was completely changed, and Hawke loved him anyway. 

“I was the one who fed Porthos the rest of the pie,” he admitted.

“I love you so much,” she laughed into his hair, “So, so stupidly much.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A piece of dialogue I nixed but still like. 
> 
> “Did it not occur to you that I may have developed a romantic attachment to your sister?”  
“After the you returned to Hightown, yes. I thought you were in love with her for a year.”  
“That didn’t deter you?”  
“If anything, it made me like you more. I thought you had good taste.” She flicked her gaze toward him. “It’s not the first time I was wrong about someone.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No real warnings for this chapter other than explicit sexual content!

Fenris woke before Hawke for once, unsure of what had stirred him from his slumber. What he could see of her face was illuminated by the embers of the fire in her room. The rest of it was tucked snugly against the dog she swore was not allowed on the bed. She had her arm thrown over him, spooning the animal who snored comfortably in his sleep. 

He watched her, the slow breathing in her chest, the small occasional twitches in her hands, soft sighs. She looked peaceful, and it was a struggle not to smooth a hand through her hair. Instead he moved the knitted blanket, which seemed to have traveled to his side of the bed, and covered both her and the dog with it. He felt a burgeoning peace and an emotion he couldn’t quite place.

And then it happened.

The memories, _his _memories, plunged into his present. He was Leto, and Fenris, and he was here, in Kirkwall, but also here, in Seheron, and here, in Tevinter. For a moment he had friends, and a family, and a home, and then he didn’t. For a moment he knew who those faces were, their names, their secrets, their likes and dislikes, their stories of embarrassments and triumphs, and then he didn’t. The knowledge passed through him too quickly for him to grab onto any of it, gone before he could latch onto a shred of himself. A moment of perfect, bright clarity, followed by a weeping chasm, a void in himself, his memory, his heart.

He was left shuddering in the dark in Kirkwall, grasping his head, the seat of his useless, traitorous, porous mind. He gasped for air, and Maker, it _hurt. _It was cruel. His skin burned and his heart _hurt _and what he wanted, what he truly _wanted_, was to wrap his arms around Hawke and bury his head in her hair.

So he did. He snuggled up behind her and the dog and he wrapped his arm around her, pressing his face into her back and stifling sobs what would rack his body if he gave them purchase. Hawke sighed, covering his hand with her own and pressing it to her chest, asleep and unaware. Amid the cruel turbulence of his mind, he was grateful, he was _so _grateful for this woman who anchored him, who loved him with every fiber of her being. And despite the pain, the hurt in his very soul, he calmed, and he slept.

When he woke, Hawke was already up. She sat at her desk, cup of tea steaming by her side, dog on her feet. Whatever she was reading had her pursing her lips in concern. She twirled a pale lock of hair between two fingers.

She was so beautiful.

She heard him stirring, and with a smile she left her desk to pour him a mug of tea. “If you’re hungry, I think Orana is preparing lunch downstairs. Or I could make you some eggs.”

He stretched as he thought about it. Whatever had happened in the night, now he was here, in his bedroom that he shared with the most remarkable person he’d ever met. He was warm, fed, cared for, and incredibly, unbelievably loved. He was free. The parts of his life he didn’t remember, the parts he would like to forget, they all led him here.

Fenris was not hungry. He was wrung out and tired in ways he didn’t know he could be tired. He was exhausted. But he was… content. This must be what content felt like. The memories left him, but they did not leave him empty this time. As he was, he was whole.

So when Hawke was in arm’s reach of him, he pulled her into his lap and kissed her like a man afraid he would never have another opportunity to do so again. Her mouth was imprinted on his memory, her tongue as it caressed his, the gentle gasp when he bit her lower lip. If he ever forgot, he would have to do it all again, and again, and again until it stuck or until he could do so no longer.

Not to be outdone by his passion, Hawke had her hand in his hair, her body pressed tightly to his, and when that was not enough, she shifted to straddle him without breaking their kiss. His hands immediately found her thighs, fingers pressing into her muscles, holding her tighter, closer. Her tongue was in his mouth, and he could feel how she _wanted _him. The heat between her legs, the desperation of her mouth, and he knew she could feel his desire hard against her leg just as well. 

“So, no breakfast then?” Hawke asked when they came up for air.

Her eyes were wide, dark, lips parted as she watched him. He thumbed circles into her hip bones, felt the way her legs tensed when he shifted his weight. His hands slipped over the smooth fabric of her finery, and he coaxed it over her head before throwing it aside.

“No” was his simple answer.

The worst had already happened, and he had lived through it, and it was bad, but it was _bearable_. He was stronger than he was three years ago, strong enough to know that when he opened his eyes, Hawke would always remain. He could do no less than repay her that favor.

In a swift motion, he had her on her back, her laughter ringing through the room. And he loved that about her and them and _now_, because they could laugh in this and push out everything that wasn’t joy. Cradled in her legs, he pulled his own shirt off and set himself to kissing Hawke’s neck until her laughter transformed into needy moans that drowned out the hammering of his own heart.

There was no fear here, only them and too much clothing between them. A problem they could solve together. He hooked her smalls with his fingers, pulling them off her hips and down her legs and tossing them aside. He shucked his own moments after. No shyness between them as he took his place over her, her legs hooking around his back, as he nestled himself between her folds, as his lips found hers again.

He rocked without even truly meaning to, drawing a gasp, harmonizing with a small groan of his own. His hand found her breast, and he rocked again with purpose, this time grazing his thumb over her raised nipple. He was rewarded with a breathy cry and friction that inflamed him straight to his core. His lips found her other breast, his tongue swirled as his thumb brushed and his hips rolled, and Hawke was a panting, pleading mess.

She was grasping him, holding him to her, fingers on his shoulders, his back, and it didn’t hurt, not really, it might have even felt good, but it itched at an uncomfortable part of his mind. Perhaps because of the freshness of his memories, the agitation in his mind, last night’s burning of his skin, there was discomfort there.

“Put your hands above your head,” he commanded. Hawke complied immediately, scooching down so she had room. He grabbed both her wrists in one hand and pinned them. “May I…? Is this…?” he breathed.

“Yes.” Eyes open, emphatic. She meant it. She was giving him control with a smile, but it wasn’t control. It was trust. It was a path forward.

“I love you.” He said it again and again between kisses, her body undulating beneath his. And he knew by her lips, by her eyes, by the freckles on her nose, that he was ready to face whatever it meant to take the next step. Hawke couldn’t cause him pain like this; she was a balm on his pain.

He repositioned himself, still holding her wrists loosely in one hand. He moved Hawke’s leg with the other, pressing a kiss to the inside of her knee as he adjusted. His finger traveled along her folds, already so wet, and he circled over her clit before moving lower, waiting, teasing. And at her insistence, words that could be called begging, he pushed his finger into her, coaxing her, testing her before adding another.

If this were another day, he would end it here. Bring her to her finish with fingers and thumbs and mouth and bask in her glow and the sweetness that was her body, the vessel of all she was. 

But this was not an ordinary day. He removed his fingers, smiling at Hawke’s needy whine. With a deep breath, he took himself in hand and stared into her face, a question on his lips.

“Hawke. I… I’m ready.”

A release of breath, a stillness as she brought her gaze to his. An answer as she nodded.

“May I?” he asked, hovering just outside her entrance.

Her response was sure, quick, simple. “Yes.”

He guided himself in slowly and held himself there, giving in to what he had denied himself for so long. Denied _them. _He pressed his forehead to hers, just breathing. Hawke felt exactly as he remembered and better than he’d imagined. Her face, her parted lips, her hungry eyes waited for him, and he felt a strange sense of possession over his life, the person he had built himself into.

There was no need to wait anymore.

He moved experimentally. Hawke exhaled sharply, and he stilled, pressing a kiss to her ear. “Do you want me to stop?”

“Only if you want to stop.”

“I do not.”

“Then don’t—don’t stop.”

He began to move in her, steady now, and her eyes fluttered shut, her back arching. He wanted to go slow, teach himself what she felt like, savor each thrust, each moan. But he felt himself a man starved, unable to pace himself, desperate for this, for her. Had they not gone slow enough already? Hawke met him at every thrust, her arms still pinned above her, and she drove him harder, faster. 

He felt the pleasure building, the torturous and inexorable rise, and— _venhedis_— he needed Hawke to come before he did. He needed—it had to be _both_ of them.

He shifted, releasing his grasp on her wrists and repositioning himself so her legs rested on his shoulders. He buried himself deeper, angling for the core of her. Her hands free, she kept them above her head, now gripping the blankets, profanity spilling from her lips.

“Come for me, love,” he growled. “Come _with _me.”

His rhythm was faltering. He was—fuck, he _close—_he was _too _close and Hawke… He had to be sure she was coming with him. With the last of his wherewithal, he reached a hand between them, his forehead pressed to hers. He stroked that most sensitive bud, and in moments she was crying out, clenching around him, and he was pushed over the edge, irretrievably lost in her. The waves of pleasure settled into his bones and into his skin, warm and relieving and deep.

He collapsed on her, his face buried in her shoulder. Slowly she brought her hands to his back, testing to see if he would protest, but he sighed contentedly in her ear. He wanted her arms around him. Whatever itch had caused him to prevent it before seemed satisfied for now.

After a long moment of breathing in her hair, he rolled off her and onto his back. He was not surprised to see she looked less relaxed than he felt. “I am going nowhere,” he promised her, “I will stay in this bed until spring, if that will assuage your worries.”

“It’s a start,” she said, “Though it may provide more worries in the end.”

He chuckled softly. “I hardly know why this one act would be more significant than another. That was not so different than anything else we’ve done together.”

He was rewarded with a strangled noise of upset, so he grabbed Hawke and pulled her to his chest. “Before you ask, it was more than fine. You were extraordinary. You _are _extraordinary.”

He saw the relief in her face, stark and vulnerable, even as she tried for a joke. “And here I was only aiming for decent.”

They fell into silence, Hawke’s head on his chest, heavy and perfect. And so it was done, this thing he had feared and wanted for so long. He hadn’t lied, sex in one way did not seem so different than sex in another, now that he had finally achieved it. Perhaps his fears were for naught, or perhaps things had to happen as they happened. Lying here with Hawke, he did not much care. He would stay here in their bed as long as she needed him to, to know that he would always stay, that he would always be there when she woke.

The grunt he released was involuntary as she vacated the bed, leaving cool air behind. He must have started to drift to sleep, and he reached out for her without opening his eyes. “Stay.”

“That’s my line,” she teased, just out of reach. She did not return for several long moments, and Fenris considered this retribution for his actions years ago. He listened to her putter around, finally opening his eyes to see her, still naked, rummaging through her wardrobe. “I have a present for you. Given that you intend to leave your lazy bones in our bed all day, now is the perfect day for it.”

“You got me a present for when we… ah… to commemorate our second first time?”

“No.” She whipped around, looking alarmed. “I had the present made, and just hadn’t decided a good time, and now you’re naked and…” He raised an eyebrow at her. “Maker, do you want to interrogate my questionable psyche, or do you want to open a present?”

He held out his hand for the parcel—wrapped in a rough cloth and tied with a red ribbon. Whatever was inside was soft. He pulled the ribbon, the cloth falling away, and revealed a pair of silk pajamas, the same shade as Hawke’s.

“You don’t have to wear them,” she said sheepishly.

Just like hers, a large crest emblazoned the back. “When did you have time to embroider it?”

A pained look crossed her face. “I didn’t. I sent out for it. If you want, I could tear all the stitches out and do it again myself, but…”

“It’s perfect.”

He sat up and shrugged the finery on. It fit well enough. The fabric was light enough not to irritate his skin. As he shuffled on the trousers—loose, light—Hawke gathered her own finery from the floor and slipped it over her head. She was grinning as she joined him back in their bed. “You’re a real Hawke now.”

“A Hawke…” The word felt different in his mouth when he wasn’t referring to her. He must have looked quizzical, because she quickly cut in.

“You don’t have to call yourself that, I mean. What I meant was you live here, with me, and you’re wearing my crest and…” She trailed off as he stared at her. “Oh, Maker,” she swore, her eyes dropping to her lap, shoulders slumping. “Some thoughts should stay in my head.”

It was a strange idea, to call himself Hawke. To have a family name. He had one, once, in another life he no longer sought to claim. He had successfully driven the night’s pain out of his mind, but now he should tell her. He took Hawke’s hand from her lap and held it in his own.

“It happened again,” he said, quietly, “My memories—they came and went.”

Hawke jolted upright. “Just now? Or when we…?”

He reached out to touch her, push the hair from her face and tuck it behind her ear. “No. Earlier. While you were asleep.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I’m telling you now.”

Her mouth worked silently as she worked out what she wanted to say. “Are you… how are you?”

An impossible question. Fenris hardly knew. Tired, content, overwhelmed, grieving, happy. It seemed he felt every emotion a person could have in the last twenty-four hours. He reached for Hawke, pulled her to his chest, inhaled the scent of her hair. Only one word felt sufficient. “Grateful.”

She relaxed into him. “For anything in particular, or…?”

“For you,” he said with a squeeze. "For my life."

Fenris Hawke. It was… a ridiculous name if he was being honest. But it was familiar, like two pieces fitting into place. It was acceptance of a past and the promise of a future. He pressed his lips to Hawke’s hair. The other Hawke in the room, he thought with a smile, the one who wasn’t him.

“So,” Hawke sighed against him, “We’re staying here until spring, right?”

He laughed. “At least.”

Lovemaking did not magically become _easy _for him after that. There were times when he hated to be touched, times when the fear came back and gripped him, though not as strong now that he knew it couldn’t hold him, couldn’t ruin him. There were boundaries they were slow to cross, but they crossed them together. Thanks to Hawke, fear was met with optimism, good humor, and plenty of laughter. And no matter what they faced through the years, he made good on his promise. He was there when Hawke woke up, and he did not leave her. Not ever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AHHH it's done!!!!! 
> 
> For the record Fenris doesn't break his promise because technically Hawke left HIM when she left for the Inquisition. That's on her, babes.
> 
> Anyway, this has been an absolute labor of love, and while I'm glad I finished it, I'm also sorry it's over. Ugh, these two.


End file.
